Luce (Teresa Avia Lim, left) with her mother, Venturewell (Tina Chilip, center), and her would-be husband, the tapster Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey, right), in the play within Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, called The London Merchant.
Fiasco Theater, in a joint production with Red Bull Theater, takes on Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle, which was a flop when it premiered in 1607. Though it has been occasionally revived, the play is mostly of scholarly interest: Beaumont is best-known for his collaborations with John Fletcher, who succeeded Shakespeare as writer-in-residence of the King’s Men, but The Knight of the Burning Pestle is Beaumont’s only play written alone. If the comedy doesn’t offer up the richness or complexity of Shakespeare, Fiasco is clearly drawn to its story of topsy-turvy community-building through theater.
Fiasco has the uncanny ability to take challenging or neglected works and make them fresh, coherent, funny, and poignant, and to do it with joyful energy and a healthy dose of music. Their technique has often been applied to Shakespeare, most notably in their astonishing 2009 production of Cymbeline, but also in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Measure for Measure.
The knight’s horse, Little George (Royer Bockus, left), shares a tender moment with her favorite groom, Groomeo (Ben Steinfeld).
While the company excels at more canonical fare too—Into the Woods, Twelfth Night—there is a special thrill in watching the members transform a work that is shaggy or difficult. They are reverent toward the power of theater, but irreverent in their approach to the material: there is a winking, metatheatrical acknowledgment of a text’s issues, but one that doesn’t prevent them from taking it seriously. The result can be farcical one moment, heartbreaking the next. You can’t quite tell if they are radically altering the piece or performing it exactly as originally intended.
In Pestle, a group of actors are putting on a play called The London Merchant, when they are interrupted by two loud audience members: a grocer (Darius Pierce) and his wife (Jessie Austrian). The grocer insists that the company should put on a play “in honor of the commons of the city,” and the protagonist should be a heroic grocer. One of the actors offers The Knight of the Burning Pestle as a title (a pestle, as in mortar and pestle, being a tool of the grocer’s trade). The grocer even supplies an actor, his apprentice Rafe (Paco Tolson), to depict the knight.
And so the actors must continue with their play, interspersed with scenes of the absurd adventure of the knight, as the grocer and his wife continue to interrupt, not quite seeming to understand the difference between theater and reality. The London Merchant satirizes the “city comedy” drama. An apprentice, Jasper (Devin E. Haqq), is in love with his master’s daughter, Luce (Teresa Avia Lim), who has been betrothed against her will to the ridiculous but prosperous Humphrey (Paul L. Coffey). There is a fake elopement, a fake attempted murder, Jasper’s fake death, and his fake ghost’s visitation to Luce’s mother (Tina Chilip).
“The play-within-a-play device allows silliness to reign, and creates great moments where the actor-characters are sometimes perplexed at the material. ”
Alongside these shenanigans is a subplot involving Jasper’s mother (Tatiana Wechsler, also given the opportunity to show off a terrific singing voice), who leaves her husband, the perpetually singing, cheerful, and irresponsible Old Merrythought (Ben Steinfeld), whose commitment to a joyful life is leading to impoverishment. Along with Jasper’s younger brother (Royer Bockus, who also portrays the knight’s horse, who has a hysterical love scene with a groom dubbed Groomeo [Steinfeld]), Mistress Merrythought flees, encountering the grocer-knight, who offers his chivalric services.
Noah Brody, Fiasco co-artistic director, and Emily Young, an original company member, co-direct the superb ensemble, who make the play both clear and engaging. The play-within-a-play device allows silliness to reign, and creates great moments where the actor-characters are sometimes perplexed at the material. The scenic design, by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader; the costume design, by Yvonne L. Miranda; and the properties design, by Samantha Shoffner, all ingeniously incorporate the metatheatrical device, a highlight being a moving doorway that gets put to hilarious use.
Paco Tolson, center, as the eponymous knight, with Little George on the left and a tavern host (Chilip) on the right, telling him of the monstrous barber Barbarosa. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
The drawback of the play-within-a-play conceit, and of Beaumont’s satire, is that it’s hard to do more than be silly: there isn’t genuine drama or deep emotion; everything gets a light touch. However, Fiasco manages to give this play real heart, with Steinfeld’s Merrythought, despite his perverse shortcomings, becoming the moral center. Merrythought’s penchant to break into song and to look for joy fits with Fiasco’s guiding principles, and the song that ends the play taps into these themes. There is mockery in the play, but it’s done gently, and ultimately the audience is encouraged to “be kind and be valiant / Live for all that you’re worth / And do it with joy / And with laughter and mirth.”
Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle runs through May 13 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St.). Evening performances are Monday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m.; matinees are at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. For tickets, visit redbulltheater.com.
Playwright: Francis Beaumont
Direction: Noah Brody and Emily Young
Sets: Christopher Swader and Justin Swader
Costumes: Yvonne L. Miranda
Lighting: Reza Behjat
